Never Going Back
by Constance Greene
Summary: You can't run. You can only scream . . . and scream no more. — RoxasAxelKairi


**i want you. i want you so **_**bad**_**.**

hi guys. remember me? (: i've been suffering an ugly case of writer's block since… well, since school's started, actually. so here's a oneshot for you, because i've finally been inspired.

**pairings**: axel/roxas, axel/kairi ( roxas/axel/kairi )  
**warnings**: some out of character qualities ( basing characters after characters from a story ) & disturbing content ( rape, sexual interactions and references, adult situations, bondage, implied death, brutality/torture, gore, light and scattered cursing )  
**inspired by**: _where are you going, where have you been?_ by joyce carol oates ( _short story_ ) ; "never going back to ok" by the afters ( _song_ ; and pretty much the entire album )  
**for**: tori ( l u c i d x d r e a m s ), as it's her sixteenth birthday! happy sweet sixteenth!

**Never Going Back**

Humming music in her ears. Slender snow white throat vibrating, buzzing of bees in a circle around her head. Gentle tapping of sandal-clad foot on lawn chair, reclined out to display long, lithe body.

Her name was Kairi. Fifteen years old, going on sixteen. In her mind, the world was hers; a place to explore and embrace all the pleasures waiting within it. The globe was spinning, spinning; and she just kept on singing.

Once she struck the age of puberty, her and her friends ( also young teens with their liquid doe-eyes sparkling and hungry for excitement ) began to go out together in public. They'd sway their narrow hips lightly down sidewalks lining highways and made their hair shine in the streetlights, bathed in an ethereal fluorescent glow that created shimmering halos you could almost catch, and then coyly flirt away.

Their pale skinny legs adorned in too-short shorts would be their rescue; their limbs carried them to places where older high school students and young adults hung out regularly. For them, it was a fun new experience. For Kairi, it was more than just fun: it was freedom.

Away from her home life with a strict-yet-apathetic mother who didn't give a damn about her. Away from her plain sister, Naminé, who could have been beautiful with her long white-blonde hair and pretty crystal eyes, but she tried too hard to please their mother and therefore it wore her out.

Poor modest Naminé, her twin who never hung out with the other freshmen and instead hovered around adults like . . . "Like some kind of loser," She'd say. "She makes me throw up a little in my mouth with all her corrupting perfection." A fallen angel whose wings someone had pulled off like a fly's. See the webs, they're transparent.

Such lifestyle spawned her snobbish and slightly stuck-up personality. Along with going out on weekend evenings ( and sometimes school nights, but don't tell Mother ), she also spent quite a bit of time in front of the vanity's mirror. She'd weigh her small yet attractive breasts with cupped hands, an offering, and later retreat to her bed, wrapped in silken sheets around her naked body, dreaming thoughts of the boys she met the previous night.

This was her life, her haven, and she was safe within it. A quiet little suburb, with green lawns and cascading rooftops and butterflies aplenty . . .

* * *

Roxas remembered his first time.

He came to him during the night while he was dreaming of being securely safe in his apartment. "Apartments aren't as safe as houses, darling," He'd told him. "But they're both just cardboard boxes, false lies – baby, I can blow 'em down in a heartbeat. I'm the Big Bad Wolf." The sinister grin that stretched across his clown-like face was more frightening in the daylight somehow, where you could actually see it. Otherwise it was cloaked in shadows, just distorted scars and stretch marks.

The first encounter was close; he had followed him from the ice cream store, and as he was licking his salty sweet treat contently, he didn't notice the sound of footsteps behind him. Each lick was closer to his fate. One, two, three. Thirty-three, nineteen, seven-teen. "These are my lucky numbers, you see. They'll be yours, too. I'll give them to you – for free. No price! Just your love, my new lover."

Footsteps collided with wall. He had him pinned in the alleyway, scrunching up his shirt's collar, nuzzling into his neck, as if he was ready to bite . . .

He had gotten away. It was a miracle of sorts, and though he later lost faith in God, he thank-you prayed Him that night after the incident. With superhuman, slurred strength as though in a dream, he felt himself raising his knee against the spidery ( yet iron-like ) body and jabbed him – hard – in the groin. He could feel him give way beneath his leg, then against his body, and managed to slip past and run ( _for his life_ ) – leaving the stick of ice cream forgotten in a puddle in the alleyway.

Roxas ran far, far away. When he finally decided he could run no further, about thirteen blocks down from the alley, he collapsed, hands on knees, panting like a dog in heat. His head was reeling, and all he could think of was that face, the trenchcoat body . . .

But two nights later the spectre visited him. How he had found his apartment, he didn't know. "I know everything, baby," The odd stranger claimed. "You can't hide from me. I know how to make you feel good – I know how to make you scream."

And that's what he did. He screamed but didn't know it. Instead there was a curious and alarming ringing in his ears, and he felt his bladder let go in fear as adrenaline took over his body and yet rendered him still.

"Aww, little boy wet himself. How _cute_," The man sneered and struck his prey. Buttons had popped, rough hands had grabbed, roaming all the way down his naked flesh, goose bumps rising on his chest. And all the while he screamed for God, screamed for Him to help him again, to not leave him, Oh Jesus, no, _please_. _And where are your parents now?_

_They died three years ago, _The forced rush of his thoughts answered. _And God died tonight._

He had felt himself being rolled over and pinned to his mussed-up sheets. There was pain, exquisite pain ( _"It'll only hurt for a moment" love-whispers_ ) that first started down below and then rode all the way up his spine, jarring electricity birthed by his execution.

Soon his buttocks were glistening with cum shown by the outside the city lights, and there were biting kisses trailing down his neck, drawing blood. He trembled all over at the touch, the caress of something long and hard prowling, searching – he couldn't tell if it was just fingers anymore – and then he was told to "Swallow." He did swallow, but in nervous fear, the spit all dried up in his mouth and his destiny like a desert.

Later, handcuffs rattled and cut deep jelly-red slices into his thin wrists. "My dad was in the police department," His torturer had said in Morse code, the batting of his eyelashes. "I took all his nifty stuffs after I killed him and drank his blood."

It was a long night. And in the end, or perhaps in the beginning, his barricade had been knocked down. The war was lost and he was broken.

* * *

Around her friends, Kairi's smile was the raised smirk of her taut lips, but elsewhere, it could be light and charming. Her eyes wrinkled up around the corners and her laugh was the chiming of bells when it wasn't dripping with carefully disguised sarcasm.

The ice cream parlor was one of their favourite places to go. Flat-soled shoes, velvet pastel colours that soiled easily across the grimy cobblestone path leading towards the quaint 50s-like parlor, tapped gracefully on the ground. Kairi's pale pink ones landed on an abandoned popsicle stick, cracking it in half.

It was after they left when she saw him. He was parked out front in a convertible painted bright red ( the shade subconsciously reminded her of Hell's blazing flames ), his skeletal arm draped casually across the car's door. She glanced at the man behind the wheel – he had a wild array of spikes the same colour of his car and was cloaked in black – and couldn't help but notice he was staring at her. Kairi couldn't tell his eye colour from the distance, but she knew they were some intense hue that made a shiver crawl down the small of her back.

She turned her body away, and as she was walking with her friends towards another store further buried in the small strip mall, she looked over her shoulder. The boy saw her and grinned. "Gotcha, babe." He shook his spiky mane lightly, as though they could break off any moment and be sent flying in her direction, impaling her like an insect to the wall.

* * *

Roxas asked no questions. He had given up long ago. His mind wondered apathetically as he rode in the passenger seat of the redhead's convertible, _Where are we going? _But he dared not speak it. These days his mouth didn't work the way it used to.

Or maybe it was his tongue, which the man had cut out.

"_The Road Virus Heads North_," The man answered, as if reading his mind. And he shook his head and laughed. Roxas' eyes flicked to the black steering wheel, and he could see it spinning its chaotic course, and the trees and scenery whipped past him, a blur of sinister colour . . .

"Today's a beautiful day. We can find a meadow and do it for a while, but then I got a hot date with someone else. What do you think, Roxy-babe? Big blue eyes?"

Roxas didn't even bother to grunt a response. He simply rested his cheek on the side of the leather interior of the car and closed his eyes, letting long eyelashes cast shadows across his cheekbones while the driver hummed "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" quietly.

* * *

Seeds tangled in her hair. If she was one of her friends, she'd giggle – but Kairi combed the mess out meticulously, annoyed. She had just taken a shower, and her parents and sister had gone out to have a picnic and wouldn't be back until much later. It was time to sit outside and sunbathe.

The backyard was enclosed by a low-hanging wooden fence that required attention, but her family claimed they were too poor to repair it this summer. The neighbors weren't nosy anyway, so they wouldn't peek. Most of them were out at the picnic, anyway.

When her mother had asked if she wanted to go with them, she had rolled her eyes and that was all that needed to be said. "Well, fine." For once she didn't respond with the usual, "But your sister is going. She's always so obedient – why can't you be for once? And what stinks?" Her nose would scrunch up comically, making her face even older and less attractive. "_Hair gel_? Are you insane?"

So she watched her family walk out the door, pretending not to care, but spotted her sister in a white dress as she left. Poor twit. It would just get ruined, sitting around in all that dirt and grass. There wouldn't be any teens there, only bratty little kids and adults.

She had fastened the lock behind them. It was an ancient contraption – one of the many other things that needed to be replaced in their house. She jarred her wrist by trying to set it in and cursed beneath her breath before retreating to the backyard.

There she dreamt. Music from the kitchen radio was flowing out onto the back patio, toned-down rock that the radio had announced as The Afters. The surreal sounds that coincided with the guitar solo rubbed behind her ears and made her smile with warm pleasure as she relaxed her body.

Twenty minutes and she must have dozed off, for when she opened her eyes she heard the rumble of a car engine pull up in her driveway that had not been there before. She did not recognize the sound as her parents' Volkswagen – it was far too early for them to be home, anyway. They were probably serving dinner by now.

She propped herself up with her palms and stretched out her stiff legs. The girl raced almost clumsily towards the back door, feeling the suddenly cold air bite at her bare arms and thighs. "Crap, crap," She repeatedly muttered under her breath, checking the mirror to see if her hair was okay.

Her limbs, unused for a while, grimaced and stung at the sudden movement. Outside, the honk of a horn beckoned her.

Kairi approached the front door slowly, hanging out by the screen door. Through the wired mesh she spotted the sleek convertible from a few days before. There were two boys in the front seats, and she recognized the driver from the ice cream parlor. Wild hair – it had to be a wig, she thought, because no matter how much hair gel or spray you used, you just couldn't _do_ that with normal hair – and seductive, joking smile.

"Hey babe, what's up?"

"Why the hell are you here?"

"For the party, baby! Whatcha talkin' 'bout? Whatcha goin' on about?"

"I don't know what _you're _talking about. I don't even know who you are."

He had on sunglasses, and she could almost see her face reflected on their metallic surface, looking right back at her. She could detect her fear. But it was still buried deep inside her conscience, refusing to surface until she figured out just what was going on. Right now she held a bored, indifferent façade to show him that she wasn't interested, even though her body was teeming with ravenous curiosity.

"Thought you might like to go for a ride," He replied, ignoring her question.

From his radio she heard music; it was the same that was playing in the kitchen.

"The Afters?"

"Fuck yes." He grinned, glancing down a bit in inclination.

His language only made her more excited when it should have made her nervous. She had never used the F-word in public before. "You know, that's not very nice to say around a girl."

"Oh, sorry, babe. Pardon my French!

Now The Afters . . . they know what they're talking about."

She felt heat rush to her face. "Yeah? They're kind of cool."

"_Kind_ of? Kairi, they're _amazing._"

"When did I tell you my name?" She said automatically, suspicion creeping into her voice.

"Right now."

She couldn't think of what to say to that. The sun peeking through the screen door made her head feel dizzy, a whirlwind of light.

"So how 'bout it? You know you want to take a ride with me. I know my Kairi."

Her gaze shifted warily toward the other kid. He noticed where she was looking.

"Don't worry about Roxas. He's a good kid. He don't talk much. Kinda shy. Not like you or me, Kai – 'cause you know you want to get in the car with me. Just got a new wheels put in. Roxas? He can sit in the back. It'll be just you and me, baby. You and me and the stars."

"You never told me your name."

"Axel Friend's my name. And a friend I will be."

She chewed on her lower lip contemplatively.

"Where? Where are we going?"

"Just for a ride, Kairi sweetheart."

"I never said that was my name."

"Oh, but it is. I know everything about you. I know that your parents are at a picnic at Langston Park right now. Right now . . . your mom's handing out a rack of ribs to Mrs. Duboise." He snickered. "Man, is she a beast! You hate her, don't you?"

Kairi was caught so off-guard that she nearly stumbled, but for some reason, her fear rendered her frozen. Mrs. Duboise was one of their many neighbors she despised. Nearing her eighties, the white-haired woman always smelled. Not like fragrant strawberry hair gel she smelled of – like decay. Her face even showed it.

"I know all your friends' names, and where you like to hang out, and what your favourite kind of ice cream is. Your best friend's name is Olette. Amirite?"

"How do you know—"

"Then there's Hayner Bullmeadow, Pence Finch, Sora Duley, Selphie Tilmitt . . . And I know you'll come to me, eventually."

"Listen, you're not from around here, though," She argued.

"'Course I am."

"Then how come we never saw you?"

"Oh, I see you all the time. And you saw me that one night. Remember?"

"I – I would remember you, though."

"Yeah?" He practically beamed. "Well, I remembered you, Kai."

"Stop calling me that." She winced. "If you knew me so well, you'd know that I hate that nickname."

"Sorry. People make mistakes, y'know?"

He had moved out of the car around five minutes before and was now leaning against the shiny chrome door, his arms folded against his chest. He took off his sunglasses and placed them deliberately on top of his head, nestled into the bloodred spikes. She saw his eyes and drew in a little gasp. They were a piercing acid green, narrowed in a parallel structure with his drawn eyebrows, which were the same colour of his hair. They looked exotic, outlined in black like an Egyptian serpent. She could see his features better – the pale skin, lightly tanned, the high cheek bones and angular face . . . And the strange upside-down tear marks beneath his eyes.

"What're those for?"

"It's a secret. I'll tell you later," He smirked, putting a finger to his lips.

"What makes you think there'll be a later?"

"Listen, my brown-eyed girl. I'll wrap you up safely in my arms and we'll be together. Forever. Holding you tight, it'll only hurt for a bit. But then you'll be in Heaven, I swears it – if only I believed in Heaven." He barked a sardonic laugh. "I'll teach you."

His pet name struck her as perplexing; she didn't even have brown eyes. They were blue.

"You're crazy."

"Me? Naw. You see Roxy? _Him_, he's the crazy one. A real character."

She looked at him again warily.

"Hey, Roxy! She's checkin' you out!" Axel Friend turned back to her. "You ain't scared of my Roxy-boy, are you?"

"He's . . . sort of strange."

"Hah! You hear that, Rox? She thinks you're _sort of strange_! What an understatement!" He pounded on the car to wake him up. He moved his great orbs of liquid sapphire towards Kairi and she could feel that they were full of weeping sorrow. They sent out a message to her, but she couldn't tell just what they were saying.

* * *

Not _this_ again. Roxas crossed his arms and sighed, refusing to look at the girl his companion was speaking to. He stared straight ahead like a stiff, unmoving. He just wondered how long this would take.

It'd be like all the other times. And he wouldn't scream. No, sir. Last time Axel 'Friend' had stuffed a bloody rag in his mouth and he nearly choked on it. "You whine too damn much, Roxy-boy. You know why I pulled outs your tongue? It's because you give me too much shit. You're too smart for your own good, but too stupid to do anything about it."

He tried not to listen to their meager conversation of Axel trying to get the girl into the car by drowning it out with the music. It was soothing, somehow. That was all that could help him these days. Music. His lips danced softly, mouthing the words even though he didn't know all of them.

Then Axel had to spot him out. He caught his first glimpse at the girl he was victimizing. He wanted to scream, _Run, you dumb bitch_, but as always, no sound would come out. She was like all the others, but somewhat more hard to get. More difficult and untrusting. He could see that Axel was enjoying the game, the challenge, but also getting slightly pissed at the same time.

If he was the same person that he was four months before, he would make a quick motion that Axel couldn't see – the universal sign with his pinky and thumb that meant 'phone' – but he had no will to do so.

* * *

"How old are you, anyway?"

"What a crazy question to ask, Kairi," He replied, taken aback and looking slightly offended. "I'm the same age as you, of course."

"You're joking."

"Naw. Maybe a couple years older. Eighteen."

Now that he was closer, she could see that he was lying. His charisma was nearly convincing, but his features were not. Even the makeup couldn't hide it. He was older – a man.

"I think you'd better go," She said faintly.

"Not until you come with us."

"No way in hell."

"Careful! You, don't, want to deny me. I mean, _really_, Kairi. I can do things . . ."

"I'm – I'm calling the police."

"Like hell you are! Honey, listen. Just listen, please."

"The . . . police. Right now."

"We're going to go to a meadow. We'll lie down in all the flowers. It'll be fine. I'll enter you and we'll be with the butterflies, you'll be flying, you'll be _soaring _in your secret place—"

"Shut up, shut up!" She clapped her hands over her ears.

"And you'll love me. You'll give into me and you'll love me. Because you see, I'm the best you have. I'm the best you can get. And . . . and, honey, you don't want to go in that house. Because if you do, I'm not coming after you. You're going to come out here instead. You're going to come to me like a good girl. Or else . . . you don't want your parents hurt, do you?"

She retreated a few steps back, onto the wooden floor of the front entryway.

"If you touch that phone, I don't have to keep my promise anymore. If you even touch that phone, I'm gonna getcha."

That was all she needed. One threat, one warning, and she went tripping towards the kitchen. Her sandals clunked on the floor in urgency. Now the radio was bleating out some chaotic melody, with pianos and keyboards and air guitars and strange screeching noises—

_Phone. I have to get to the phone. I have to make it._

She felt like she was running from the monsters of her past. When she was younger, she used to think that there was a monster in her closet. The old Boogeyman, you see. Every little kid's nightmare. She'd always shut the closet door before she went to bed, but she realized now, in a panic – what good did that do? It could always knock the door down. And it could knock down a screen door even easier.

Kairi snatched for the phone, but her vision was a blur. Her hip knocked into the counter and sharp pain ran up her side. But she could surpass that. There was no greater pain than getting to the phone now.

At first it was just a little noise – a little choking. Then she was screaming, screaming into the phone without pressing any buttons, crying for her mother, her sister, her father, _oh God please he's going to get me and it'll all be over._

As she fell and slid down the cabinets, she hitched in great, whooping breaths of air, but no air seemed to fill her lungs. It was like in a dream, a nightmare: when you tried to move, tried to run, tried to scream – and you just couldn't.

Eventually she ran out of breath.

She didn't have a chance. The moment Roxas saw her running, he knew that it was all over, that she wouldn't get to the phone fast enough. Even then, and if she managed to remember the lucky number of nine-one-one ( _thirty-three nineteen seven-teen, countdown to destruction _), the police wouldn't get there soon enough. He knew the feeling; he knew it quite well. They were acquainted, you see. No one could save her now.

On the back bumper of Axel Friend's car was a sticker. It said _Abandon All Hope._

Axel had forced him to lick it after he had pissed on it. This was before his tongue was cut out. Poking out his tongue reluctantly, he probably hesitated too long and Axel mashed his head into it instead, creating a fairly good-sized dent in the plastic. "What're you worth for? Nothing. Nothing," He had chanted. And out came the knife, glistening in the hard sun.

Blood poured down his nose like a blanket of scarlet. It was probably broken, but that was the least of his worries now. A stream of blood ran down his forehead from some deep crevice buried in his blond hair and flowed into his eye. He hissed under his breath and cried bloody teardrops, curses engulfing his mind with a hot, fiery passion.

_I hate him_, He thought. And it was so strong. _I __**hate**__ him._

"Do you want to bleed more? Do you like that? I'll carve up your face so much, baby, that you'll look like a Jack-O-Lantern." Axel grinned down at him.

The knife flashed down upon him. His right cheek was cut, the tip of the blade gouging into his soft flesh and drawing a slowly filling pool of blood around the point. Then he jerked his head to the side, knocking the knife out of him and slicing it across his skin.

Roxas thought he heard the muffled words "You little bitch."

"Now my lover, that's not how we play and you know it."

"I hate you!"

It was the first time he ever thought that . . . and the last time he ever spoke it.

The absinthe green eyes widened. "What?"

Roxas looked up at him defiantly, a glare in his eyes, and spat in his face.

He can't taste his food anymore.

The girl would have the same fate. Just another vulnerable mouse in his collection of lab rats, ready for fatal experimentation.

But they? Axel and Roxas had a special bond – one that could not be broken, even in death.

* * *

She had blown her eardrums out. Had to have. There was no sound, only the slight ringing in her ears of numbness.

"You done screaming now?" The voice from the door.

She swallowed and nodded timidly. The slightest dip of her neck made her throat hurt and throb like the beating of her heart.

"That's a good girl. Now drop the phone."

Her fingers, once curled tightly around the phone's grip like death, gradually slipped off and lied lifeless on the linoleum floor.

_Get up. Move those legs of yours, the ones you always fawn over, and go, _A little voice inside her head demanded of her, but to where would she run? There was no escaping. If he had lit her house on fire – and she could hear the familiar click of a lighter outside, because her mom always smoked cigarettes with those things and she despised it – the only place to go would be outside, running into his arms.

His open arms, outstretched and waiting for her.

Dream-like, ghost-like, she got up. She began moving towards the front door on feet that seemed to know where they were going ( _her mind did not_ ), towards the screen that separated her from him.

She was walking the mile.

And she knew that she was never going back.

**disclaimer**.

kingdom hearts, oates' story, and the many references in this story ( including songs, other stories, and the Bible ) do not belong to me.

yep, well. that was my first m-rated story. ummm. i guess it could have been teen, except for some, er, inappropriate parts that some people don't want to read. so, uh. review i guess, if you liked it? –fails.-


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